“It lies high up against the sky, a hill farm surrounded by woods and rocks and a ravine so deep that when the rest of the land was stripped of its trees, the virgin forest was left there because men had not yet devised a way of getting out the great logs. You approach the Ferguson place by a steep, half ruined road through the forest, a road worn deep, where even the outcropping sandstone is rutted with ancient wheel tracks. On its damp shaded banks grow ferns and carpets of the loveliest of all spring flowers – the hepatica anemone. The road, even today, is half ruined because it is steep and all the year round the water which drains from the bank seeps into it, undoing the work done on it the year before. It is as if Nature herself sought to keep the Ferguson place wild and lonely and inviolated. Overhead the trees join their branches so that the whole road is a tunnel laced with wild grapevines where light itself is the color of watery depths.”
From Louis Bromfield’s Pleasant Valley
This description of the way to this cache is still almost as accurate as when it was written in 1945. The cache is about ¾ mile from the parking lot at the working farm. It is mostly uphill but not that difficult to walk the vehicle-wide road. The road is closed to all but park vehicles.
The cache can also be reached from the horse staging area parking by following the bridle trail from B to C. It is about half mile walk this way but the trail will be very rough and muddy in wet weather. Remember, it is a horse trail
Malabar Farm State Park is a place to visit as well as to seek a cache. The working farm and livestock will interest all and delight and educate the children. The 32 room Big House is preserved just as Louis Bromfield left it in 1956. Tours are available of this mansion where, in 1945, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married.
For more information on the Malabar Farm State Park go to –
Ohio DNR - Malabar Farm State Park
and
The Malabar Foundation
Louis Bromfield was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Early Autumn in 1927. Every novel written by Bromfield was considered a best seller. For more information on Bromfield go to –
Who Is Louis Bromfield?
and
Louis Bromfield Book List